”Everybody stared at Sally, in her canary yellow beret and shabby fur coat, like the skin of a mangy old dog.
‘I wonder,’ she was fond of remarking, ‘w”Everybody stared at Sally, in her canary yellow beret and shabby fur coat, like the skin of a mangy old dog.
‘I wonder,’ she was fond of remarking, ‘what they’d say if they knew that we two old tramps were going to be the most marvelous novelist and the greatest actress in the world.’
‘They’d probably be very much surprised.’”
I was watching the Rick Stein travel show Long Weekends, and he was in Berlin. As with most of his shows, he incorporates books that correspond with his travels and many times produces memories of his youth, travelling about Europe with a knapsack full of books. In this episode, he discussed Christopher Isherwood’s book Goodbye to Berlin and of course Sally Bowles obsession with a concoction she called Prairie Oyster. ”Dexterously, she broke the eggs into the glasses, added the Worcester sauce and stirred up the mixture with the end of a fountain-pen.” Sally practically lived on them and soon has Christopher craving them as well, or maybe he just craves them as part of the Sally mystique.
I’m sure almost everyone on the planet has seen the 1972 film Cabaret, based on this book, or the stage play. If you haven’t, you must. Sometime in the early 1990s when I was still hanging about the University of Arizona campus trying to finish up a degree in English Literature, a young woman asked me to go see the stage play Cabaret with her. My budget at the time was more in the range of $1 movies than $60 for a seat to see a play, so I readily said yes and would have said yes if she had sported a moustache and a raging case of BO, but to add to my enjoyment, the young lady was not only attractive but intelligent and a huge fan of Cabaret. We arrived, and I felt constricted in my borrowed suit and self conscious about my skinny tie, which I felt that if the embarrassment reached too high a level at least I could strangle myself with it, quietly, somewhere in the back of the theatre where I wouldn’t intrude on the events on stage.
Before things could begin, a woman came out on stage moving in that self-conscious way that people do who are uncomfortable speaking before a large audience. I thought to myself, shit, she’s going to tell us that the show has been cancelled due to unforeseen disasters, which I was prepared to yell...but the show must always go on. She tapped the mic, always a delaying tactic for the self-conscious, and said, “We have a problem ladies and gentlemen; the lead actor playing the Emcee has become ill and can’t perform.”
I looked over at the stricken face of my companion as groans emanated from the crowd around us. The woman’s voice brightened, “But, and I can’t hardly believe this, but we called Joel Grey to see if he could possibly stand in...and he said, yes!”
A pandemonium of clapping broke out, led by my ecstatic companion. You’d have thought that a Beatle had wandered on stage as Joel Grey poked his head out the curtain for a moment to soak in the applause. For those who don’t know, Grey was the actor who played the role on Broadway and in the film version, so this was a real treat indeed. At the time, it was a great experience, but of course, as time has gone by, I’ve grown in my own cultural awareness, and my memories of that experience have only become edged in more vibrant colors.
So the poignancy of this book is that it is set in the 1930s, just as the Nazis are coming to power. The gorgeous decadence and extravagant creativity that is exploding out of Germany is about to be stomped with jackboots. Isherwood and Sally Bowles are living in the last few moments of this period and are trying to discover ways to break through and have enough money to leave their hand to mouth existence behind them. They try to shake down a rich American, but discover that they aren’t quite as clever as they thought, nor is he quite as doltish as they hoped. Sleeping with ”dirty old Jewish producers” isn’t really getting Sally anywhere either. She does like to shock people, and when Christopher introduces her to his girlfriend, things do not go well.
”’Haven’t you any small-talk except adultery?’
‘People have got to take me as I am,’ retorted Sally, grandly.
‘Finger-nails and all?’ I’d noticed Natalia’s eyes returning to them again and again, in fascinated horror.
Sally laughed: ‘Today, I specially didn’t paint my toe-nails.’
‘Oh rot, Sally! Do you really?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’
‘But what on earth’s the point? I mean, nobody--’ I corrected myself, ‘very few people can see them…’
Sally gave me the most fatuous grin: ‘I know, darling...But it makes me feel so marvellously sensual….’”
There is this great moment in the book, one of many great moments, when Christopher is talking to a friend about belonging to a place and how Berlin has become that place for him that he can feel most like himself. I think most of us seek such a place our whole lives and have to settle for finding a place that at least allows us an opportunity to mostly be ourselves, but actually finding the Shangri-La, the place that best speaks to our soul, is an elusive discovery. If you have found such a place, don’t let wild horses pull you away from it, but then sometimes, like in the case of Berlin, something happens that changes the place from what you need it to be. The magic is crushed beneath the marching feet of a coming tide of faux-moralistic, bombastic rhetoric.
The rise of Hitler is starting to intrude on their lives, and one of Christopher’s friends makes an observation that could apply to politics today.”The political moral is certainly depressing: these people could be made to believe in anybody or anything.”
There is lots to enjoy in this novel, but I must confess that when Sally Bowles is off stage, I pine for her return. What is most appealing about her is her freedom to really be herself, and if you must love her, it will be because you know everything there is to know about her. Shame is a foreign concept to her. Impulses are to be embraced, and life must be squeezed until the last drop of joy or pain can be extracted.
“Why should this one wolf be shut up for an individual crime, when mass crimes go unpunished? When all society can turn into a wolf and be celebrated “Why should this one wolf be shut up for an individual crime, when mass crimes go unpunished? When all society can turn into a wolf and be celebrated with fife and drum and with flags curling in the wind? Why then shouldn’t this dog have his day too?”
Set against the background of the Franco-Prussian War in the 1870s where thousands are being slaughtered indiscriminately on the battlefield, why should society be so upset about a few dead prostitutes, a few disinterned and gnawed on corpses, and a bit of disconcerting howling in the middle of the night? Frankly, Paris has bigger issues, such as food. With the war effort taking too much food from the mouths of the population, even the rich are having to get creative with their dinner selections.
“Braised shoulder and undercut of dog with tomato sauce; Jugged cat with mushrooms; Dog cutlet with green peas; Venison ragout of rats, sauce Robert. Leg of dog and raccoon, pepper sauce.”
I must say I would more likely be out with the werewolf eating my neighbors before I’d even consider eating my dog. Most of the bloody action is kept off stage, but we do get treated to a few shiver-inducing glimpses of the werewolf at work. ”Suddenly, there was a piercing scream, a long drawn-out blood-curling yell that wound and wound, growing shriller and shriller, stopping suddenly with a deep dark gurgle as though all that vast sound were being sucked back and down into a waste-pipe.”
Few are as concerned about the activities of Bertrand Caillet as his Uncle Aymar Galliez, who has set down his adventures, what he knows of them, for posterity. “But there was a strange shame here that he could not overcome. Oh, the terrible disgrace, the ignominy of it—possessing a mythical monster in one’s own family, in this age of science and enlightenment!”
Bertrand is the product of a rape, a priestly rape, right beneath the stained glassed windows of the chapel. His mother Josephine was like a beast unleashed, as if this act of desecration against her body opened up the floodgates of her own pent up sexual desire. No man was safe from her needs, nor could they resist the offer of her charms. She shortly would be thought of as the town bicycle, with everyone getting a chance to ride. This was disconcerting to Aymar’s family who was charged with her care. The rather prudish Aymar also finds himself a “victim” of her alluring wanton flesh as well.
This is certainly a theme that Guy Endore explores throughout the book. The inner Hyde who resides in all of us. The werewolf is quite possibly the only one being honest about his own desires. The priest who debached Josephine, the neighborhood men who take advantage of Josephine’s newfound lack of inhibitions, and even Aymar falling prey to his denied yearnings are all upstanding members of society, but all eagerly participate in the ongoing debauchery of Josephine. Later when Bertrand meets the lovely Sophie, she is consumed by a different desire. She wants to feed him, much like a willing victim offering her neck to Dracula. ”He uncovered her. There was scarcely a portion of her body that had not one or more cuts on it. The older ones had healed to scars that traversed her dark skin with lines that were visibility lighter than the surrounding area. The newer ones were angry welts of red, or hard ridges of scab. In the candlelight the latter were like old jewelry or polished tortoiseshell.”
Sophie’s compliance is frankly terrifying. She is trying to keep Bertrand from killing and feeding, but she is also caught up in the sensual and carnal aspects of him lapping her blood. This induces more shivers for me than the prospect of Bertrand opening up a fountain of blood from some random victim. I also find it intriguing, considering the fact that this book was published in 1933, that there are numerous, spicy scenes that certainly would have made a young lady blush in the early twentieth century.
When we think of classic horror, the first books to come to mind are Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I would also include Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey. There is something missing from the canon, and that would be a classic tale of lycanthropy. Some would argue that Endore’s book should be included in this marquee group of tales that have had such an impact on culture. Certainly, the legend of the werewolf deserves a place in the highest pantheon of horror literature. Is this it? I’m not sure. There is a lot to like about this tale, but there is also some clunkiness to it as well, but there are clunky aspects to the other classic horror books, too. I wonder, if I had read this several times by this point in my life, if my relationship with it would be stronger?
Guy Endore, struggling novelist, was also a struggling screenwriter. He did see The Curse of the Werewolf, based on this book, produced and wrote the screenplay for The Mark of the Vampire. He was an unrepentant member of the communist party, and after he was blacklisted, continued to sell Hollywood scripts under a pseudonym. He wrote biographies about Casanova, Voltaire, and Joan of Arc that did reasonably well, but he is best known for being the writer of The Werewolf of Paris.
If you are a fan of the werewolf legends, you have to read this book. If you are a fan of classic horror, you should definitely read this book. I bought a copy of this book in 2015, and because recently I was working on a werewolf story of my own, I finally read it. I’m so glad I did and plan to read it again before I kick off this mortal coil, perhaps some night when the wind is blowing and the wolves are howling.
”Berlin was a crazy city and it was getting crazier and crazier.”
It is 1931, and clashes between communists and fascists are almost becoming routine. ”Berlin was a crazy city and it was getting crazier and crazier.”
It is 1931, and clashes between communists and fascists are almost becoming routine. Jews are starting to get the first taste of what the future will be, and law students are showing up to class espousing the fanatical views of the Nazi party. Against all this turmoil, Charlotte Ritter is trying to find a young girl who witnessed the murder of her friend by police. Gereon Rath is trying to figure out why people with mobster connections keep ending up in the canals. ”He didn’t realize until he saw the eyes staring back at him out of a face so pale and swollen it no longer looked human. But human it was, the skin waxy and green with algae, hair swaying like seaweed. There was a deep, and bloodless--and therefore all the more hideous--wound on the man’s face, which exposed half his teeth and made it look as though he were snarling. He was staring at a corpse.”
Investigating would be easier if he wasn’t, as it turns out ineptly, being forced to keep tabs on the American gangster Abraham Goldstein. Goldstein is as slippery as a greased pig. Back in the states, he learned some skills slipping away from G-men, and he soon has Gereon scrambling to keep up with his movements. The assumption is that Goldstein is up to no good, but his true purpose for being in Berlin remains a mystery. I really enjoy this character. He is a Jew unlike any Jew the fascists have encountered before. There is this scene where he comes upon four Nazis beating up an old Jew, and let’s just say the brownshirt bastards don’t do as well against an American mobster as they do against the nearly helpless people they are used to harassing.
Gereon and Charlotte are also trying to figure out their own relationship. They are crazy about each other, but often work at cross purposes. She is trying to establish a career for herself, a difficult task in 1930s Germany for a woman, and Gereon is often trying to figure out how he works into her future plans. Gereon is also caught between his own mob connections and his job as a police officer. He tries to use both forces to help solve his murder cases without compromising his own integrity. As Gereon and Charlotte pursue their investigations, it soon becomes apparent that their cases intersect, and as always, when they are at their best is when they are working together. I’d love to see them both leave their career paths and open their own private investigation firm.
I was first introduced to the works of Volker Kutscher when I watched the simply amazing TV show on Netflix called Babylon Berlin, which is based on the Kutscher novels. I then learned that Sandstone Press in the Highlands, the furthest North publisher in Britain, had decided to translate the books into English. There are five books out in the series, of which this is the third one. The covers are elegant, noir beauties, and they all match, making a very pleasing grouping on my shelves.
I absolutely adore the way the German actress Liv Lisa Fries plays Charlotte Ritter in the TV series. In fact, I prefer the Charlotte in the TV series to the one in the book, though I will say that in this book Charlotte shows more of the characteristics that I like about the Fries version. I’m hoping I continue to see a fine evolution of her character with each book.
I would suggest watching the three seasons of Babylon Berlin on Netflix first and then, if you want more Gereon and Charlotte, start tracking down the books. I enjoy both, but the TV series does such a wonderful job conveying the grit, the deviances, and the radical politics that turned Berlin in the 1930s into a cauldron of crazy.
She pressed her forehead gently against his shoulder. ‘I know, sugah...I kno”’Pearl…’
‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered.
‘I love you...That’s what’s wrong.’
She pressed her forehead gently against his shoulder. ‘I know, sugah...I know.’”
Demetrius Octavius Calhoun (D.O.C.), trumpet player extraordinaire, was a member of the famed Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s and a veteran of World War Two. He was among 2800 Americans who volunteered for service in the Republican army of Spain, the same war that Ernest Hemingway supported and which later inspired his Pulitzer Prize winning novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Okay, let me amend that statement. The committee voted unanimously for the novel to win the Pulitzer, but because of the “scandalous” nature of the book, the president of the board, Nicholas Murray Butler, convinced them not to give an award for letters in 1941. Hemingway fully expected to win the award, so I can only imagine the steam coming out of his ears when he heard about the board’s decision.
Can you envision what would have happened if Butler had ever walked into the wrong bar in Key West?
The interesting thing about the Spanish Civil War is that, since Germany and Italy were fighting for the Nationalists, this war was really a dress rehearsal for WW2. Doc was fighting on the right side of history. If America and Britain had supported the Republican army and defeated Germany and Italy, they could have very well avoided fighting WW2 altogether. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and both Britain and the US were still licking their wounds over WW1, and another war was almost unimaginable.
So you’re thinking this book is about the Spanish Civil War, or maybe it is about Hemingway? Nope, this book is about Pearl and Doc. When Walker Smith writes a book, she places her fictional characters firmly in the realities of history. Contemporary society, soon to become history, has a very real impact on people’s lives. There is one more nugget of history I have to talk about, and it is really Smith’s fault because she makes it a central piece of her novel. The McCarthy communist witch hunts from about 1950-54, one of the darkest stains on American politics, swept up people like Paul Robeson, who, thank goodness, was born with a silver tongue. ”Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?” That man gave me chills. Doc, because he fought on the communist side of the Spanish Civil War and had a good buddy who was a communist card carrying member, was right in the crosshairs of the Communist witch hunt. Being an honorable veteran of WW2 gained him nothing.
Meanwhile, Doc was trying to win his Pearl, who just happened to be inconveniently married to a deadbeat junkie.
”’This is Pearl. She’s our new singer.’
Everyone went stone silent.
Doc closed his eyes and her name took up residence in his mind. Pearl.”
Most of us might have a summer thing or a spring fling or a winter wonderland of lust/love, but for Doc, this moment was the beginning of a lifelong obsession. He’d found his North Star, his soul mate, his yin for his yang. He blew a better horn when Pearl was frolicing through his mind.
And then they lived happily ever after.
*The sound of the power going out on a record player.*
Real life isn’t Disneyland.
Periodically, investigators showed up to harass Doc over his communist associations. Redneck Southern racists wanted to string Doc up for having the audacity to try to entertain them with music. Pearl’s brother, Ronnie, was struggling with a whole host of issues. They were raising kids now, which meant that Pearl couldn’t go on the road with Doc, which was always a recipe for dissatisfaction in the strongest of relationships. The spectre that loomed over their lives was worse than all their other problems put together, and it was aptly called Hydra.
The many headed beast from mythology was a designer form of heroin, where the highs are higher and the lows are lower. Trying to get off it could cost Pearl her life. Doc would do anything to part her from her addiction, except risk her life. He started to realize that their were insidious connections between a man with a badge and the drugs that were proliferating on the street.
The drug war had begun. Was Doc ready to take on one more fight? One more war?
I first met Pearl and Doc in Walker Smith’s book Bluestone Rondo, and even though this book is a prequel to Bluestone Rondo, I would suggest reading Bluestone Rondo first. You will be left with a burning desire to find out more about Pearl and Doc, and that is when you make the very smart decision to read The Weight of a Pearl. I actually enjoyed knowing Pearl and Doc without the baggage of their history. They are suave and sexy, caught in an epic love story, but when I reached the end of Bluestone Rondo, the first thing I said to Walker Smith was...I want to know more about Doc and Pearl. She already had my hit of hydra in the needle and a tube to wrap around my arm.
The incredible amount of research that Smith had to do for these books lends weight to every book she writes. Her characters are not just living in history; they are caught up in history. The reader is brought into the story with them. If you are fortunate, you might even hear Pearl call you sugah or Doc blow a few crystal notes on his horn. You’ll feel the outrage, the hardship of just trying to live, and the sadness of knowing the forces aligned against you are powerful enough to destroy you. But like Doc and Pearl... you will fight on.
”’This is a stickup. Everybody stand still!’ Dillianger shouted. Only a half dozen people complied. The rest either didn’t hear him, or couldn’t compr”’This is a stickup. Everybody stand still!’ Dillianger shouted. Only a half dozen people complied. The rest either didn’t hear him, or couldn’t comprehend what was about to happen. Miffed, Dillinger dropped the pillowcase from his stockless Thompson machine gun, pointed the rapid-firing weapon upward, and squeezed out a burst of shots, just missing an ornate chandelier. The discarded slugs burned through the decorative plastered ceiling and knifed into the hardwood flooring of a second-story conference room. A cloud of white dust wafted down from above, creating a ghostly visual that made the famous felon smile.”
To my knowledge, this is the most complete, most definitive John Dillinger biography that has ever been published. John Dillinger’s activities are so well documented that Dary Matera could have almost given us a day by day report on what Dillinger was doing from 1933-1934. His reign of terror is so brief, but made such a lasting, indelible impression on American law enforcement and the American public that he was the most wanted, the most lauded , and the most recognizable celebrity of the 1930s. ”The police hysteria, seen in dozens of historically preserved memos exaggerating The Terror Gang’s activities, numbers, and strengths, was not universally shared by the public. In a time of bank closings, mortgage foreclosures, and thrift scandals, many people were rooting Dillinger on.”
The public is feeling so helpless in the face of the recession that they don’t see Dillinger as a dangerous criminal. They view him as someone who is finally fighting for them against the establishment. They attribute Robin Hood characteristics to him, wrongly, but one observation I read held some merit...at least he is putting that bank money back out in circulation. Yes indeed, he is certainly doing that.
Dillinger’s nickname is the Jackrabbit because he likes to vault over the counters at the beginning of a robbery. This can be attributed to a man showing off his athletic poweress, but it also has the benefit of dazzling the bank employees, and most of them have to think as they are witnessing this feat...I can’t do that. To me, that makes the awestruck bank employees more pliable and less likely to feel they can do something to interfere with the robbery.
There were people calling for an amnesty deal to be offered to Dillinger. It is estimated that over two million dollars was spent by law enforcement trying to catch him, over four times the money that he stole from banks. Given those numbers, wouldn’t the government have been smart to offer him a deal and hope that he would retire to be a gentleman farmer? The thing is, J. Edgar Hoover has no intention of even considering offering him a deal. First, this bastard has to be punished. What kind of deterrent will it offer other would be criminals from trying to duplicate Dillinger’s efforts? Second, the FBI isn’t even the FBI yet. It is called Division of Investigation. In 1935, it officially becomes the FBI. Hoover leverages Dillinger’s crime wave into establishing a need to expand and better finance the burgeoning FBI. In other words, for the future of the FBI, Hoover knows that his agents have to be the ones to bring down Dillinger
And local law enforcement just needs to get the duck out of the way.
The famed Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, the one who tracked down and blasted Bonnie and Clyde into oblivion, offers to help bring down Dillinger, but there is no way in hell Hoover is going to let Hamer anywhere near his golden ticket.
Crooked bankers are actually begging Dillinger to come hit their banks to hide their own embezzlement of bank funds. There is evidence that some of these bankers actually reached out to associates of Dillinger to try and arrange a hold up. This leads me to speculate further, how many rat bastard bankers arranged a bank robbery with other criminals to hide their criminal activity? If you can’t get Dillinger, why not manufacture your own hold up? Dillinger is blamed for many robberies that would have been impossible for him to perform. Matera does an excellent job of separating the fact from fiction.
Dillinger is directly responsible for improving law enforcement methods. The two way radio, body armor, better firearms, and an improvement in investigative method can all be attributed to Dillinger.
There are miraculous escapes. There are running gun battles with outgunned law enforcement. There are complete muck ups by the fledgling FBI officers, like the disaster at Little Bohemia. There are beautiful gun molls, like Billie Frenchette, who was probably Dillinger’s soulmate. I think it is another mistake that, after she is captured, they sent her to prison. We are so intent on punishment in this country that we often lose sight of the bigger picture. I believe that, if she had been turned loose and had been tailed by agents, Dillinger wouldn’t have been able to resist coming for her. Eventually, it all has to come to an end, but Dillinger leads them all on quite a ride. It certainly must have felt like something was missing from the American landscape after Dillinger was finally...well you’ll just have to read the book.
”There has never been anyone like John Dillinger before or since. He was indeed America’s first, and most enduring, celebrity criminal.”
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